Collision
by Necoto
Summary: She was a silent, black and white film. He was a colored, modern motion picture. Their two worlds were never meant to intersect.


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Standard disclaimers apply. Kingdom Hearts is not mine.

Note: This is an experiment of sorts.

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**Collision**

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_Cold, she thinks as she leans against the window of the train car, watching the scenery pass by in the form of a white blob occasionally dashed with flecks of gray and black and every shade in between. Her sketchpad rests on her lap, empty and void of any pencil marks. She twirls her pencil absent-mindedly between two fingers, willing but not expecting some sort of inspiration to come to her._

_Blowing a long strand of pale hair out of her face, the quiet artist watches with dulled stormy eyes as her breath fogs up the window. Reaching up with her right hand, the one still twirling the pencil, she eases the edge of her eraser onto the spot her breath has marked, drawing a simple, childish smiley face._

_Everything turns still after that. The train stops, and somewhere outside her empty compartment she hears the wordless murmurs of people with destinations as they get on and off. She stays, eyes glued to the nothingness beyond her window and stops twirling her pencil. The fog on the window clears and her view of whiteness is once again unobstructed._

_A whistle sounds somewhere off in the distance, and there is a split second pause before the train begins to move again. Her pencil starts to twirl between two fingers and her sketchpad has yet to be touched. A sort of silence permeates the air, and the only sounds to be heard are the train wheels running over rusted iron tracks and her soft, almost non-existent breathing._

_And then the door to her own private world bursts open, and everything is disrupted._

Pushing the doors to the compartment open, he stood there, watching her as the cool air rushed in, mixing with the comfortable warm air that occupied the small space. He looked at her with his brilliant blue eyes and asked silently if he could sit with her. With her tiny nod of acquiescence, he closed the doors and walked in, seating himself opposite of her. Taking in her appearance, he noticed her empty sketchbook and nodded towards it.

"No inspiration?" he asked. "That happens," he added, not even giving her a chance to answer. Tearing his eyes away from her, he settled into the seat and proceeded to stare out the window.

_She slowly blinks at him, not knowing what exactly to make of the stranger in front of her before deciding silently that he does not matter. After all, she shouldn't worry about someone she will never see again. She knows he will leave when the train arrives at his stop, and the short memory of him will slowly fade in her mind. _

_Because to her, he is nothing more than another face in the crowd._

Feeling her eyes on him, he turned his gaze towards her. "Something wrong?" he asked and watched as she shook her head, allowing some strands of her light blonde hair to fall in front of her face. Letting out a shrug, he turned in his seat so that his back rested against the window and brought up his feet from the floor onto the scarlet cushioned velvet of the seat.

Turning his head towards her again, he asked, "Will you wake me up when the train reaches the next stop?" Satisfied with her simple nod, he crossed his arms and closed his eyes, intending to take a nap.

_Slowing twirling her pencil, she studies him carefully before glancing down at the blank sheet of paper her sketchpad offers her. It would pass the time, she thinks. And, she admits, he is more interesting to draw than the ever-changing snowy landscape rushing past her outside the window._

_Her pencil comes to a stop, and she shifts it into an appropriate position for drawing. She starts out with very light lines, moving her pencil delicately over the paper in an attempt to create an outline of his body and the seat he occupies. As she goes on to add more and more detail to her sketch, her lines darken and more pressure is placed on her pencil. _

"Drawing something?" he suddenly asked, feeling her shock and hearing the pencil come to an abrupt stop. Opening his eyes, he glanced over at her, noticing the grimace on her face indicating that she had made a mistake. Lowering his gaze, his eyes traveled down to her sketchpad, and with little surprise, saw a developing picture of himself there.

"That's pretty good," he complimented her, smiling slightly at the sight of the spreading redness across her pale skin. Stretching languidly, he kept his eyes on her and let out another small smile as he watched her add to his sketch.

_She can feel his eyes on her skin, gently tracing over her, and it makes her shiver. Her pencil moves in an almost robotic fashion, and she does all she can to try not to damage the picture any more than it already is. He is still watching her, and she does her best to ignore him._

_He'll go away, she tells herself. And he won't come back. She'll never have to see him again. He doesn't matter._

"So, how long have you been drawing?" he asked in an attempt to make conversation, smiling again as she jumped, a bit startled.

_She glances at him, somewhat warily, though why she does so, her mind does not comprehend. A prickle of something similar to fear but not quite tickles her, and she quickly shifts her eyes away from him._

_She gives him an uncommitted shrug in an attempt to silently say that she doesn't want to talk. Her eyes glance up at him again; he is still staring at her._

"Since forever?" he ventured to guess, unperturbed by the fact that he was having a one-sided conversation. The artist in front of him nodded slightly, still refusing to speak. He noticed her pencil starting to move again.

"So, where are you going?" he asked, eyes shifting along with his body towards the scenery flying outside his window.

_She follows his gaze outside, staring blankly at the passing white canvas. She blinks slowly, running his question through her head. No one has ever asked her that before. She leans back in her seat, her pencil stopping completely and holding still in her hand. Her eyes are blank._

_She doesn't know._

Silence engulfed him as his companion stayed silent, staring outside the window. Turning his attention and sight back to her, he noticed her relaxed, almost defeated, position against her seat.

"Do you not know?" he asked softy, paying heed to the silence for the first time since he got on the train.

_She looks at him blankly, wondering who this stranger is and why he is trying to pry into her life. Do I know, she questions herself silently, where I'm going? What my destination is?_

_She moves her steel colored eyes to the velvet ground, casting his image from out of her range of sight. A frightening silence resonates through her head as she strives to come up with an answer to his question. _

_Where was she going?_

He studied the girl in front of him, watching as her eyebrows came close together and wrinkles decorated her forehead. Her eyes were still downcast and unblinking, as if in deep thought. Taking in her appearance, he concluded that she couldn't have been anymore than a year or so younger than himself. She was a nineteen or twenty year old that didn't know where she was going. Runaway, perhaps, he thought to himself.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," he said, forcing her attention back onto him.

_Her eyes snap up as soon as she hears his voice. She nods and stays silent, watching as he turns his eyes away from her. Looking back at her unfinished sketch in her lap, she frowns as she realizes that he has moved, and the position he is in now is different than what she has already captured on paper. There is no finishing the sketch now._

_But it doesn't matter, she thinks to herself, eyes gazing out the window again. The next stop will come soon, and he will leave. He will never return, and she will never see him again. He does not matter enough to stay permanently in her world._

_She blinks slowly at that last thought. _

_Who is important enough to remain in my world, she wonders. And once again, her mind only supplies her with blanks and holes and gaps. Pretty and poetic, but useless._

_And she realizes with a start that outside this train car, she knows nothing of the world._

The snowy landscape whirling past him outside the window bored him to death, and out of the corner of his eye, he watched her, curious to her situation. What was she running away from? He began speculating; was it debt? Could it be abuse? Or was it an unlikely, but still probable, arranged marriage? Weren't those the most common troubles women faced in the world?

He shook his head of those thoughts. He hardly knew the girl in front of him enough to make such rash assumptions. She might not even be running away at all, he thought.

"What's your name?" he asked her suddenly, as if realizing that he hadn't done so before. He watched her turn her head toward him, eyes questioning, as if not understanding his question.

_Her mind echoes his inquiry. She looks at him, wondering what his purpose could be for asking something so random. Her eyes travel to her unfinished sketch of him, and she hears his question again in her mind._

_My name, she thinks. _

_She turns to look at him again, and opens to mouth to answer—_

He lurched forward in his seat slightly as the train came to a sudden stop, whistles blowing somewhere in the not so distant background. Frowning, he got out of his seat, question forgotten completely, and opened the compartment door.

"I'll be right back," he said before exiting and following the semi-formed crowd of passengers to the conductor's compartment.

_She stares at his exit and closes her mouth, the letters to form her name dying on the tip of her tongue. It's not like it matters, she tells herself. She watches the door to her little world close again, hearing only a blur of indecipherable words beyond the wooden barrier._

_He won't come back, she tells herself, and moves to neatly tear out his unfinished sketch. She prefers the untouched white pages of her sketchbook to his imprint anyways, and he is nothing important. Carefully folding her sketch of him into a small square, she opens her window and stands up._

_The train starts to move again, shaking her balance slightly. Its pace is steady and its whistles blows softly in the periphery of her world. Goodbye, she thinks, and lets the page fly out the window, flapping helplessly like a pinioned bird._

_Closing the window, she sits back down and proceeds to twirl her pencil, wishing for inspiration to fill the blanks of her sketchbook, seemingly unperturbed by the brief disruption of her peaceful world. It's not like his existence is important anyway, she tells herself._

_For the next couple of minutes, the ride is silent and void of all human sounds, and she is somewhat content just staring out the window like she feels she has done for an eternity and more. The low rumble of wheels spinning furiously over rusting train tracks vibrates softly through the compartment, gently allowing the memory of his intrusion to slide out of her mind._

_Because he is insignificant, she thinks. And he will never come back._

_A small, sardonic part of her mind silently tells her that no one ever does. _

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